Bloggers
Daniel W. Dresner, assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and
Henry Farrell, assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, have delivered a rather profound (and easily-read) strategic description of the "blogosphere" in the current issue of
Foreign Policy, the quarterly journal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Their article, Web of Influence, offers sound and highly persuasive arguments that address what the dKos community is and what it is becoming. I recommend that you read it, if for nothing more than the sensation of empowerment it will offer to (what I take to be) most in the dKos community.
I've excerpted a few clips below and I am most interested in your opinion, because the authors offer a very interesting evaluation of our own future.
Dresner & Farrell carefully dissect the blogosphere, and I think they show parts of its insides we should keep clearly in mind as we discuss the evolution of the dKos community.
In the somewhat rarified stratosphere of American intellectual journals, divisions so clear to most of us down on the ground don't matter quite as much. "Know thy enemy" is a first principle of the very educated, and the readers of such journals as Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, editor-at-large, First Things, (for the Mel Gibson Catholic point of view), Foreign Policy, and a handful of others cross-read at least as often as dKos members visit the Other Side, and for most of the same reasons.
In short, Web of Influence describes the potent force the Dean organization recognized almost three years ago and the mainstream media are struggling to come to grips with.
It's a strategic description of the resource that people like Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz and the Darthest of Vaders are carrying around in their briefcases right now.
The intro
Every day, millions of online diarists, or "bloggers," share their opinions with a global audience. Drawing upon the content of the international media and the World Wide Web, they weave together an elaborate network with agenda-setting power on issues ranging from human rights in China to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. What began as a hobby is evolving into a new medium that is changing the landscape for journalists and policymakers alike.
This next line of reasoning will hurt a little, but it's worth it.
Even the most popular blog garners only a fraction of the Web traffic that major media outlets attract. According to the 2003 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press Internet Survey, only 4 percent of online Americans refer to blogs for information and opinions. The blogosphere has no central organization, and its participants have little ideological consensus. Indeed, an October 2003 survey of the blogosphere conducted by Perseus concluded that "the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life."
Here's why it's worth it:
Blogs are becoming more influential because they affect the content of international media coverage. Journalism professor Todd Gitlin once noted that media frame reality through "principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters." Increasingly, journalists and pundits take their cues about "what matters" in the world from weblogs.
There is a difference between "rich" blogs and "poor" blogs, and here's where the article starts to get a little hairy. It's a line of thinking every dKos member should understand, in my opinion, and it's a line of thinking we should all appreciate, because it defines the relationship that will exist between the dKos community and others a few years from now, if Marcos (and 25,000-odd users) have their way:
These prominent blogs serve as a mechanism for filtering interesting blog posts from mundane ones. When less renowned bloggers write posts with new information or a new slant, they will contact one or more of the large focal point blogs to publicize their posts. In this manner, poor blogs function as fire alarms for rich blogs, alerting them to new information and links. This self-perpetuating, symbiotic relationship allows interesting arguments and information to make their way to the top of the blogosphere.
The power of blogs in the "real world" lies in the egalitarian nature of the blogosphere:
The media only need to look at elite blogs to obtain a summary of the distribution of opinions on a given political issue. The mainstream political media can therefore act as a conduit between the blogosphere and politically powerful actors.
And here's why dKos and others can expect more attacks from the seats of power:
Small surprise, then, that a growing number of media leaders -- editors, publishers, reporters, and columnists -- consume political blogs.
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Blogs may even provide expert analysis and summaries of foreign-language texts, such as newspaper articles and government studies, that reporters and pundits would not otherwise access or understand.
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The speed of real-time blogger reactions often compels the media to correct errors in their own reporting before they mushroom.
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Media elites rightly retort that blogs have their own problems. Their often blatant partisanship discredits them in many newsrooms. However, as Yale University law Professor Jack Balkin says, the blogosphere has some built-in correction mechanisms for ideological bias, as "bloggers who write about political subjects cannot avoid addressing (and, more importantly, linking to) arguments made by people with different views. The reason is that much of the blogosphere is devoted to criticizing what other people have to say."
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The more blogs that discuss a particular issue, the more likely that the blogosphere will set the agenda for future news coverage.
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For the traditional media -- and ultimately, policymakers --this makes the blogosphere difficult to ignore as a filter through which the public considers foreign-policy questions.
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Ultimately, the greatest advantage of the blogosphere is its accessibility. A recent poll commissioned by the public relations firm Edelman revealed that Americans and Europeans trust the opinions of "average people" more than most authorities. Most bloggers are ordinary citizens, reading and reacting to those experts, and to the media.
It then goes on to quote Andrew Sullivan. Sorry, I don't do Sullivan.
So where does that take the dKos community's impending evolution? It means we ought to examine our own "community values" carefully, not only in recommending dKos policy changes and guest columnists but in posting diaries, comments and even ratings.
That might give us a little clearer understanding of similar "values" that the VRWC is trying to pass off for the theft of an election. Seems like if we could understand one, we should be able to understand both.
It also means we should take the future of this community very seriously. It's a powerful tool, and all of us have some pretty defined wants.
Just a thought.